Columns

Stay vague, Ed — too red and you’re dead

Labour’s leader last week opened a frank discussion about the burden of public
spending. It was time to challenge the culture of “the only something for
nothing country in the world”. Holy Thatcher! What have they been putting in
the fair-trade tea?

A series of hard-hitting rhetorical questions followed, beginning with this
corker: “What is progressive about a chief executive on more than £100,000 a
year not paying for his prescriptions, while a pensioner needing care has
their help cut?” But breathe out again and chillax — that wasn’t cautious Ed
Miliband; it was Labour’s new Scottish leader, Johann Lamont. The left
establishment immediately predicted she was doomed.

Down in London Neal Lawson, guru of the centre-left Labour ginger group
Compass, mocks Miliband’s lack of ambition: “Quiet. Labour is sleepwalking
to the next election. Don’t wake it up ... If it doesn’t move or make a
sound — then it might cross the